November 19, 2012

Gaza and Israel Under Siege: Photo Comparisons Vs How the Brain Works

To be utterly basic about it, photo galleries of the Israel-Hamas crisis are generally trending one of two ways. There are sets dedicated to the horror in Gaza alone and groupings that juxtapose scenes of fear, damage and loss on both sides. The difficulty with the latter (from an editorial, as much as an Israeli political standpoint) is that viewers don’t tend to hold circumstances separately in mind as much as draw comparisons in terms of degree of terror and loss.

After a week, there are already thousands of photos from the crisis that have been presented together. As a microcosm and similar compositionally, these two — from the same NYT slideshow — speak to the difference. (See the captions below.)

(photo 1: Uriel Sinai/Getty Images caption: Israelis took cover from a rocket attack on Friday during the funeral for one of the three people who died in a rocket attack the day before in Kiryat Malachi.photo 2: Bernat Armangue/Associated Press caption: Palestinians buried the body of Tahrer Salman, covered with a blanket, in Beit Lahia, Gaza Strip. According to relatives, she was killed in an Israeli airstrike.)